I agree, I thought it was a fun movie and I was interested what was coming next, but I thought the other films were heavy handed and had way too much fan service. I believe Lucas was intimidated by the fans because of their off the wall disapproval of The Phantom Menace. Anakin was not the character I imagined described by Ben to Luke in Star Wars, I wanted this great pilot who became a Jedi and was this highly respected legend. Those last two film that character was nothing but, and I don't think Lucas could ever top the sheer awesomeness of Darth Maul; Fett, Dooku, and Grievous, and Palpatine were all subpar in my book.
The Phantom Menace felt like a small, enjoyable story for children. The mistake in the following prequels IMO was having Anakin and Padme as the focus of the story instead of going down the Rogue One route and showing the story from the perspective of some ancillary characters whose fates we don't know. The third one spent too long tying up loose ends that did not need to be tied. To an extent, this seems to be where they are going with ST Discovery. With Pike and Spock being vessels for unknown characters. The extent to which Trek could have gone down this route is open to debate as there seemed to be resistance from the original cast in TWOK to pass the torch to the next generation of characters, partly because the original cast still had a lot of potential, and partly because they did not want to be marginalised in future outings - even as far along as Generations and Voyager. As far as future TMP style outings, you can see how some of the cast took advantage of the monster maroons to come off their diets. I wonder how much they would have struggled in the tighter TMP uniforms.
I actually didn't care for The Phantom Menace too much. I'm just a casual Star Wars fans so I come from a different angle I guess. However, Darth Maul was a great villain. I was disappointed he was killed off. Since Anakin didn't become Vader until the 3rd film they could have easily kept Darth Maul at least to the 2nd film. Jar Jar Binks, well, the less said the better. Frankly he's part of the reason I can't get into TPM. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were ok, but could have been better. I actually loved Natalie Portman as Padme (I'll admit, part of that is because she's beautiful and I am a sucker for a beautiful women ) but I thought she did well. She wasn't some maiden that needed to be rescued every minute, she was perfectly fine with picking up a weapon and taking on the enemy herself. But what's his face (I don't feel like looking it up) that played Anakin, he was brooding way to much. And there was little to no chemistry between him and Portman. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in the sense that I think they were trying, but sometimes either it's there or it isn't. I get what Lucas was trying to do with centering the story on Anakin. After all, it's his betrayal that really brings the Republic down. If he had gotten a better actor---or at least an actor that better fit the role, I think they would have been better. By the time ROTS came out Lucas sort of had to go into fast forward because by the end it had to lead into the first Star Wars film and we were still pretty far removed from that by the end of AOTC. I actually liked Palpatine in ROTS, in the first 2 films he was sort of meh. But in ROTS he finally took that final step to becoming the evil Emperor we all know and love. So I think the prequels are a missed opportunity in a lot of ways. There were some things I liked but they never developed to their full potential. They were always going to pay lip service to fans, after all they were prequels and they had to develop into what we know was the original trilogy. I don't think that was the problem. I think Lucas got so wrapped up in the special effects end of things, he lost some of the character development that made his first trilogy so good. And while I agree Anakin was probably the right choice to center the trilogy around, he took too long to develop that angle, and the ultimate reason for his turning evil just didn't jive all that well to me. One little ingenious bit I did like from Lucas was in TPM when Qui-Gon was convinced Anakin would destroy the Sith. He was absolutely right. He just didn't realize the years of hell that would happen in between. But yes Anakim would eventually defeat the Emperor.
AotC and RotS are pretty good movies if you fast-forward past most of Anakin and Padme's dialog. Unfortunately, by the time the prequels ended I'm uncertain how audiences are supposed to sympathize with either one of them given the monumentally stupid choices they've made. At least Jar Jar is essentially a cameo after TPM. Then there's Padme setting the feminist movement back 200 years by "losing the will to live" right after she's had two kids, but...I think I'll just end this post here.
I would have loved to have seen what happened on the newly refit 1701 , under Kirk's command, after TMP and long before the events of WOK.
I partially agree, I thought the rest of the prequels should have been the story of Anakin Skywalker and instead... the story was about the fall of the Republic, something no one cares about because we already knew it fell. Rogue One is an irrelevant tale which expands on an element I already knew from Star Wars; I'd rather see movies which could be it's own thing and not regurgitate stuff which were done and was done a lot better in the OT. ST Discovery is doing what failing spinoff shows do; they know their characters can't carry the show so the producers are relying heavily on fan-service to keep it moving along. This was something I saw evident with ST Enterprise where they never even had to have the Trek cliches', but it was a direct sequel to FIRST CONTACT and by inappropriately having the Vulcans as the first to encounter humans--it opened the door to whatever was popular on TNG and TOS to show up... constantly. It appears the writers are plotting their horrible stories based upon fan-polls and what is considered popular. Being distracted by fanwank will never lift up the characters because the wank will only remind viewers how great the franchise used to be. It's best to go your own route (Pronounced root) and leave the Klingons, and Borgs, and whatever popular in the past or in the future, and create their own sub-culture. I still strongly believe DS9 was a better show when it kept itself away from the cliche's; something new and different will always be hard to swallow for stupifans but the show can only be what it was meant to be... different, but never selling out the core's own principles like having a full scale war! That is not Star Trek, that's not Star Trek! As for TMP, those uniforms were not tight, they were fitted to the talent's form; again those outfits were well thought through for a five year mission. The outfits were not forgiving for talent who were not in shape but I don't think those Hornblower-esque uniforms ridiculously rushed through by Nick Meyer made it any better... when the cast were in decent shape; it's a horrible design and was never appropriate for action of any kind. TMP outfits needed a color change to TOS series colors of green, blue, and red, maybe coloring the bottoms or the sides black to help the battle of the bulge.
Similarly, I can only agree partially ; Rogue One was one of the strongest entries in the franchise, even if I thought taking it literally up A New Hope's backside was a step too far for me. If Darth Vader's scene was fanwank, count me as a wanker. Your mileage will vary with what constitutes 'fanwank'. I can see it sometimes - I thought the TOS movies increasingly drifted towards self-parody. The return of beloved characters, familiar technology, and traditional themes is fanwank to some and is pretty much why we got TMP. I actually thought that Enterprise improved when they started to introduce elements of TOS and Discovery would get less criticism if they had tried a bit harder to emulate the visual style of the Cage by using more understated technology - a simple thing that many might consider fanwank and again , I was very much on board for that. I think there is a sweet spot. I would say something like shoe-horning the Kessel run into Solo or including R2D2, C3P0, or Chewbacca into the prequels, or re-using Khan in Into Darkness were too far for me.
The look and feel of TMP were epic but sooner or later, the fact that the cast did age was going to have to enter into the picture. I believe Shatner was ok with hiding their ages, but that doesn't mean that the audience would be. The uniforms would have to change, because most of the cast hated them, especially Shatner. I like the costumes, though, but they weren't going to stay. Gene had still over spent Paramount on getting the movie off the ground, so how a TMP series sequel might've been retooled isn't clear. A much cheaper movie that's for sure. Possibly a time travel adventure to the early 80s. In my opinion, TMP's what the Star trek movies should have all been like. But there was too much going on with it that those with control over it just didn't want. They might've kept the sequels more like TMP, but they weren't going to be overly much in the same vein as TMP was.
I haven't seen Rogue One or Solo yet, but the Kessel Run doesn't sound like fanwank. It's all in the execution I guess.
Solo is fanwank to the extent that they had to come up with an in-universe explanation for why the Kessel Run is measured in distance units as opposed to time (the easier way out of this writing error is to say Han was using natural units where c=1, so that time is in fact measured in distance units, but ...).
That's what I've figured for years, long before the movie came out. The alternative is Solo didn't know what he was talking about and I reject that. Han was correct in what he said.
Off topic, I always felt like The Phantom Menace was under-rated somehow, but it wasn't until very recently that I realized it's because it's the only one that feels like a fun adventure movie. It recaptures the essence of the original 1977 Star Wars, but modernizes it. The following two movies are too grim, and take themselves too seriously, probably because Lucas got surprised by the backlash he received from fans about the 'childish' first movie (the fans, as usual, forgetting that they're looking at it through the prism of adulthood). I was 16 when The Phantom Menace came out. I only knew the original trilogy from home video. I had no investment in it from my own childhood, so was pretty much the target audience. I thought it was great. I like it even more now. Even compared to the more recent Disney outings. Too much of Star Wars is too grim, The Phantom Menace never quite forgets that the original trilogy was a fun adventure, yes with some interesting exploration of light and dark, but never bogged down in this mire of seriousness that a certain contingent of fans think it should be. The Phantom Menace is more like Star Wars than either of the other prequels, and also, to my mind, the recent sequels too. On topic, one observation that the recent Red Letter Media re:View of Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought to my attention that I hadn't really thought about before is that all movies are, stylistically, products of their time, and The Motion Picture honestly only just managed to be made in the 1970s... but in many ways, from decor design to costumes, exhibits that Disco-era Trek we never had. (The TV show going off the air before the 70s, the movies really taking off after the 70s). In a great many ways, The Motion Picture, and the Motion Picture aesthetic, was always fated to stand alone... only by being completed earlier in the decade could that really have continued... I don't know if things like the monster maroons were inevitable, but I do think, with the 1980s around the corner, the Motion Picture aesthetic was never going to stick. One way or another, that style, those uniforms, would probably have been changed come 1982.
I had a lovely 2-hour conversation with Richard Taylor the other day about his time with Robert Abel & Associated on TMP and he says that when they assessed what had been built for the aborted Star Trek [Phase] II series (sets, model, etc.) all the design was out of date, as if no one had been following the state of the art in science fiction films. So what we got in TMP was this suped-up rework of all that, with 2001 and Star Wars influences, arguably the last gasp of that era of clean design.
See, I think TMP designs have aged better than the later tweaks and uniforms, with the probable exception of clunky buttons as opposed to touch screens.
By that logic Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day should never have been made because we know how WWII came out or 13 Days because we know how the Cuban Misslle Criss ended. The story is in HOW these things came to pass. I don't get why so many people have a problem with this. The flaw with the prequels is that Lucas didn't make this downfall compelling. Watch 13 Days and see how it's done: tense as heck and yet we know we didn't get nuked.
It would, you're right! And if they did, that, I would have been happy with it. Unfortunately, I don't really have any ideas for that, just yet.